But Moscow may have miscalculated the fallout of its intrusion, which has so far led to resignation of a high-ranking U.S. official, congressional investigations and a bipartisan circling of the wagons around the need to protect the integrity of America’s democracy, several leading Russia experts said.

“The blowback has been very strong,” William Courtney, an adjunct senior fellow at the Rand Corp., said in an interview as the House Intelligence Committee opened hearings into allegations of Russian hacking into the 2016 presidential campaign. “The story has magnified more than the Russians expected,” Courtney said…

“The fact that they were willing to do it openly suggests Putin is trying to fire a shot across the bow, in a political sense, to show that Russia has the capacity to make it look like the integrity to the U.S. elections is not as strong as Americans think it is and to undermine confidence … that the democratic process is honest,” Courtney said.